Scouting the Enemy: St. Louis Blues

Record: 5-4-0

Leading scorers:Paul Kariya (2G, 10A, 12pts), Andy McDonalds (1 G, 11A, 12pts)

Blogs: St. Louis Game Time

In case you missed it, St. Louis goaltender Manny Legace pulled a Marc-Andre Fleury last week.  The injury wound up taking him out of the game and will keep him out of the lineup tonight. 

Between the pipes for the Blues will be Chris Mason who was just recently on the wrong side of a 1-0 shutout against the Carolina Hurricanes. 

Brad Boyes and Keith Tkachuk is the real threat offensive threats for St. Louis.  Even though Kariya and McDonald lead the team in points, you may have noticed they each have over 10 assists.  That's because these two guys are the ones scoring the goals.  Boyes has seven and Tkachuk has a team-high eight goals, but if the Penguins aren't careful tonight those numbers will improve.

Look for the Blues' Cam Jannssen to rough guys out, potentially even drop the mitts with Godard or Bissonnette.  Jannssen is tied with David Backes for most PIM on the team with 20.  As far as fights are concerned, Jannssen already has two this season, while Backes' penalties are an accumulation of minors.

But if there's one fight I can predict/hope happens it's David Koci vs Eric Godard.  What's that?  You don't know who David Koci is?  Let me clear this up for you.

In a preseason game with the Lightning he sent Sergei Gonchar into the boards.

Yeah, that's David Koci.

Let me just say I've never had an issue with the St. Louis Blues.  They've done their thing for as long as I can remember and they've hardly ever bothered the Pens, unless you want to go all the way back to 1970 when the Blues eliminated Pitt from their first postseason. 

I'll let that one slide for the sheer fact that I wasn't born yet, but let's hope I won't develop a real reason to hate the Blues by the end of tonight.